At least 14 people were killed and 33 others injured when a car bomb ripped through a packed market in Baghdad's Al-Shaab district yesterday, an Iraqi interior ministry source said.

Several women and children were among the dead in the attack, which targeted a mixed Sunni-Shia area of the capital.

Gunmen fired on the crowd just before the bombing and fled, leaving behind a car, which then exploded, the source said.

Earlier fighting between suspected insurgents and Iraqi police killed at least six civilians in Baghdad on Tuesday, and a roadside bomb killed a US soldier on a foot patrol in another part of the capital, officials said.

Another bomb destroyed a liquor store in Baghdad in what appeared to be the third attack on the shop by militants who are determined to impose Islamic customs in Iraq by closing down establishments such as liquor stores and beauty parlours. That blast, one of three heard just past dawn, shook much of central Baghdad.

The gunbattle in Baghdad broke out at about 10:30 a.m. between suspected insurgents riding in three cars and Iraqi police in Dora, one of Baghdad's most violent neighbourhoods.

At least six civilians were killed and four wounded in the crossfire, said police 1st Lt. Maithem Abdel-Razaq.

The US Army soldier died when a roadside bomb exploded near Rasheed airfield, a former Iraqi air force installation in southern Baghdad, damaging a Humvee and also wounding an Iraqi civilian, said police Lt. Mohammed Hanoun.